E.J. Montini began writing news columns for The Arizona Republic shortly before the first governor in state history was impeached, continued doing so as another governor was indicted and resigned, and has carried on over 25 years through out-of-control urban sprawl, unchecked illegal immigration, increasing daily temperatures, decreasing rainfall and recession. Coincidence?

Arizona’s top-secret, globe-trotting, troop-supporting Gov. Janice K. “AfJANistan” Brewer, would like to run for another term in office and I am all for it.

Seriously.

In order accomplish her goal the governor must challenge the state constitution.

Do it.

I’m behind her 100 percent.

And no, it’s not because Brewer has been a goldmine for a two-bit column writer.

(At least, that’s not the ONLY reason.)

During a conversation on election night the governor told me she isn’t quite ready to walk away from her job. She loves the work, believes she has more to contribute and is contemplating a challenge to the state constitution, which appears to require her to leave office in 2014.

Article 5, Section 1 reads in part: "No member of the executive department shall hold that office for more than two consecutive terms… No member of the executive department after serving the maximum number of terms, which shall include any part of a term served, may serve in the same office until out of office for no less than one full term."

Brewer, then Secretary of State, became governor when Janet Napolitano left office after the 2008 presidential election to become Secretary of Homeland Security.

She is in the middle of her first full term. Some very smart lawyers don’t give the governor any chance of winning a constitutional challenge. She’s been thinking about it for a while, however.

As far back as last May Brewer told the Republic’s Yvonne Wingett-Sanchez, "I have been encouraged by people in the community -- people whom I respect, and others whom I don't even know -- wanting me to look into what really constitutes a term."

Go for it, governor.

Fighting for a job you love is better than going out without throwing a punch. It’s better than listening to those who say you should leave with “dignity,” or urge you to make room for the next generation.

This has nothing to do with politics. (And only a little to do with my selfish journalistic concerns.)

As the aging Beatle Paul McCartney told Rolling Stone magazine: “You get the argument, ‘Make way for the young kids,’ and you think, ‘(Expletive) that, let them make way for themselves. If they’re better than me, they’ll beat me.’”

Exactly.

Potential gubernatorial candidates, like Republican Secretary of State Ken Bennett, should have to take on Brewer at the polls, not in the courtroom.

Same with any Democratic hopefuls.

Brewer could ride off quietly into the sunset, but why should she?

Look around.

George Foreman came out of boxing “retirement” at age of 45 and became the oldest heavyweight champion in history.

The novelists Elmore Leonard, Toni Morrison and Tom Wolfe are all writing in their 80s, much older than Brewer.

“Being an octogenarian is just a hobby of mine,” Wolfe has said, “something I do at night.”

Among America’s biggest political powerbrokers are liberal billionaire George Soros, in his 80s, and the conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson, 79. Each of them is looking to buy future elections.

Satchel Paige was a 42-year-old major league baseball “rookie” after playing in the Negro leagues.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar didn’t retire from pro basketball until age 42.

Quarterback Brett Favre and receiver Jerry Rice played pro football into their 40s.

Times have changed. The poet Dylan Thomas was right about not going gentle into that good night.

Gov. Brewer’s spokesman Matt Benson told me the governor probably won’t make up her mind about challenging the constitution and running for another term until next year. But she is intrigued by the idea of trying to extend her time in office.

And why not?

Taped to my work computer is a piece of paper on which is printed a two-word phrase in Latin. The governor could use it for her next campaign slogan.

The words are credited to the sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer Michelangelo, who lived to be 89. Late in life the great Renaissance genius is said to have scribbled on one of his sketches, "Ancora imparo."

The Polish government, with the help of the U.S. government and the U.S. courts, has finally thrown wresting coach Roman Wroclawski to the mat.

His friends worry that he’s down for the count.

“We’ve been fighting this for so long and believe there are so many red flags, so many things that say Roman is being treated unfairly and that this is a political vendetta,” said Jeff Funicello, a coach and former Olympic-quality wrestler who has trained and worked with Wroclawski. “But it looks like he’ll have to go back to Poland, so all we can do now is try to get some people in the American media to say something about it so that the people in Poland see we’re paying attention and nothing bad happens to Roman when he gets there.”

I first heard about Roman in 1998. At the time, he was working as a cabdriver and volunteer coach for the U.S. Olympic team.

He’d earned a name for himself in his native Poland in 1982 when he won a world championship in Greco-Roman wrestling.It turned him into a national celebrity and got him an audience with then-Pope John Paul II.

In the mid ‘90s, however, Roman wrote a Polish-language book that was highly critical of the way athletes were treated in his and other Eastern European nations. It didn’t go over well in his home country. Wroclawski was in the U.S. at the time hoping to live here permanently.

In Poland, he was mysteriously (at least to him and his friends) charged with defrauding a company that he’d owned. The government asked for the U.S. to send him back.

Since then it’s been a long court battle.

In 2000 Roman trained American wrestler Rulon Gardner, who won a gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling by defeating a Russian champion who had not been beaten in 13 years.

Gardner said back then of Roman’s troubles, “I’m willing to do anything I can to help Roman stay. Here in America, we can use his knowledge and expertise. Personally, I’m worried about his safety if he went back.”
Roman’s friends still worry about that. But he has lost his most recent appeal in federal court and may soon have to return to Poland.

“That book he wrote in the late 90s has come back to haunt him,” said Jeff Funicello. “It’s outlawed in Poland and Russia. The Polish government says it’s these other charges but we’re all convinced that it’s political. The people in the book that Roman wrote about are now some of the most powerful people in the country. If they came right out and said this was a political vendetta we wouldn’t send him back. But they’re using these other charges. We don’t want him to go back, but if he has to go our goal is to let the government know that the American media is interested in his case, so maybe nothing will happen to him.”

I can’t imagine that a hack columnist in far off Phoenix, Arizona, will have much influence on the powers that be in Poland.

But I can’t help but be struck by the affection and long-standing loyalty of Roman’s friends. And I still recall a conversation I had with him in 2000, a few months after the Olympics. I wrote a column about it.

Roman was in Sydney, Australia, when his student Rulon Gardner won the gold. I asked him what that was like.

“It is like a dream,” Roman told me. “When Rulon wins I touch my nose to make sure I am not dreaming. It was beautiful. I am so proud. So honored to be part of this for America.”

It was the kind of thing that a grateful immigrant would say.

He added, “They (meaning, almost everyone) believe Rulon will lose. They think, like the Russians, that Karelin is king. But, in America, there are no kings. Or maybe Rulon is king. That’s what I say. I tell Rulon, ‘I think the last great victory of the Cold War is you!’”

In 2000 I wrote, “No Roman. The last great victory of the Cold War is you.”

It appears that near half of Republican voters believe President Obama stole the election.

A recent poll says so, anyway.

It also says that Republicans believe the president was assisted in this theft by ACORN, an organization that no longer exists.

Here’s a depressing couple of paragraphs from an article in “The Hill:”

“Nearly half of Republican voters say that ACORN — the community organizing group that closed in 2010 — aided in stealing the 2012 election for President Obama, according to a new poll released Tuesday.
“The survey, conducted by Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling, found that 49 percent of GOP voters believe that the president did not legitimately win reelection because ACORN interfered with the vote. A full 50 percent of Republicans said Democrats engaged in some sort of voter fraud.”

So, either a very large number of Americans buy into ridiculous conspiracy theories or a very large number of Americans are incredibly sore losers.

Or both.

In which case they probably believe the poll was rigged to make Republicans look bad by the same people who stole the election.

You know how after smoking a joint you sometimes repeat a conversation that you just had and you don’t even realize you did it until some dude tells you, “Bro, you said that same thing, like, two minutes ago?”

Of course you don’t.

Because you’ve told your kids that you never smoked marijuana, or maybe that you were in a dorm room once where a doobie was being passed around, and you may have put it to your lips, but (like former President Bill Clinton) you didn’t inhale.

Maybe your children even bought it.

That’s not the point. The point is that in a sadly ironic twist Arizona officials are playing the part of weed-smoking stoners, rehashing an argument that has been resolved more than once and is, or should be, over.

Earlier this week, Attorney General Tom Horne and Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery were told by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Gordon that he would not prevent Arizona’s medical marijuana law from going into effect, allowing dispensaries to open.

The judge did not buy Montgomery’s argument that county employees could face federal prosecution for aiding and abetting drug crimes.

And why should he?

Federal prosecutors have said many times over the past few years that they aren’t interested in arresting bureaucrats who are following state law. It hasn’t happened in any of the nearly 20 states that also have medical marijuana laws.

Montgomery, Horne and Gov. Jan Brewer, who has backed their efforts, simply don’t like the medical marijuana law.

Their argument for this is that federal law supersedes state law. Just the opposite argument they used when promoting Arizona’s SB 1070.

Citizens have approved the medical marijuana measure more than once, and the dispensary system state officials been trying to inhibit offers the best opportunity to regulate marijuana sales in a way that makes sense.

After the judge’s ruling on Tuesday I spoke with Ryan Hurley, a lawyer who has worked with several of those hoping to open dispensaries.

“It’s a good day for Arizona voters and a good day for patients,” he told me.

Horne and Montgomery say that the case will be appealed.

“I expect that they will appeal,” Hurley said, “But they haven’t asked for an injunction at this point. And I don’t think they’d be likely to get one anyway, so at least for the next year or so people will be able to operate. And I think that an appellate court will find what the two previous courts have found. Which they should. Once the process is in place it will not only be good for patients but also good for the state’s economy.”

The way Hurley figures it, by the time an appeal rolls around a system will be in place that Brewer and associates will have to accept.

Not only that, but what happened in Colorado and Washington this past election might change everything. Those two states passed laws legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use. That’s a much more complicated issue for the feds to deal with than medical marijuana.

Still, Hurley continues to hear from people who say that our medical marijuana law was only created to be a stepping stone to legalization.

“I would invite those who say such a thing to go to a cancer ward if they thought this law was about recreational use,” Hurley said.

That can sound like cheap hyperbole coming from a lawyer.

But not from a physician like Dr. Samuel D. Benjamin, whose patients have used marijuana. Benjamin is the host of a one-hour show on Saturdays at 4 p.m. on KTAR, 92.3 FM.

“I have patients for whom marijuana decreases their dependence on other pain medications,” he told me. “I have patients who use it to make tinctures (a plant extract) and rub it onto joints and it helps them. I’ve had elderly patients using it to increase their appetites, and they actually eat, results we don’t get from anything else. There really is no rational argument for opposition to this.”

That’s true, dude, but this is, like, Arizona, where we have irrational arguments about – What was it again? Oh, yeah, pot. -- over and over and over and …

Arizona’s anti-medical marijuana Chicken Littles – Attorney General Tom Horne and Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery – were told by yet another judge that, no, the sky is NOT falling.

Maricopa County Superior Judge Michael Gordon did not buy the argument by Horne and Montgomery that county employees could face federal prosecution for aiding and abetting drug crimes if medical marijuana dispensaries are permitted to open. (See an article here.)

(Federal prosecutors have said time and again that they aren’t interested in arresting bureaucrats following state law.)

Of course, this latest ruling will only serve as proof to Horne and Montgomery (who hate the medical marijuana law) that the sky IS falling.

Already the Chicken Littles (who also include Gov. Jan Brewer) have been brushed aside in federal court.

That hasn’t stopped them from trying to prevent a smooth, logical implementation of a medical marijuana law that Arizona voters have repeatedly approved.

A while back I asked Ryan Hurley, who represents some of those hoping to open dispensaries, about the actions taken by Brewer, Horne and Montgomery.

"It was a little surprising," he told me. "Their stated intention from day one was to try to resolve this in a civil fashion in the courts, and that seems to have gone the other way. It's unfortunate because what they're going to end up doing is forcing cancer patients into the black market, into back alleys to pick up their medicine."

Montgomery said Tuesday that he would appeal the latest judge's decision.

The last time Montgomery dragged out the case, Hurley told me, "If he (Montgomery) is successful in delaying or impeding the dispensary program, all he is going to be doing is allowing this unregulated gray market to pop up. And patients aren't protected and growers aren't protected. The dispensaries offer a safe, legal, compliant way for people to get their medicine, and that is what people voted for."

What has been bizarre from the start is the way states’ rights advocates like Brewer would suddenly kowtow to what they say is the supremacy of federal law.

Bizarre, but not surprising.

The argument over medical marijuana, like the argument over immigration, isn’t based on states’ rights but on ideology.

States’ rights is just a cover.

Something a patron at a marijuana dispensary might describe as blowing smoke.

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